c. 2006 Religion News Service

NEW YORK CITY _ Even in the best of times, freedom must fight for its existence. American freedom, which we celebrate this week, is no exception.

The forces arrayed against freedom are formidable. From the earliest days of Colonial life, the wealthy have sought to rig the system to their benefit. A free flow of trade, ideas, peoples and enterprise threatened their control, so the moneyed class sought to perpetuate slavery, prevent the landless from voting and stop new immigrants from assimilating. The wealthy sought to avoid military duty and yet win military contracts, set up a farming system that benefited themselves first and farmers last, and deny the people full access to basic rights.

Early arrivals sought to marginalize new immigrants. Light-skinned marginalized dark-skinned. Insiders controlled the flow of information. The educated taught the laboring class enough to be useful but not so much as to encourage rising expectations. Corporations encouraged a welfare state for corporations while denouncing welfare for persons. Banks encouraged debt, then seized farms, houses and future earnings.

Now, in the name of liberty, government spies on citizens, denies basic rights when those rights are inconvenient, sells government favors to whoever can pay, rigs the electoral system to benefit incumbents, fights freedom of the press and deploys powerful propaganda tools to amass more power.

Is it that bad? No, it’s worse. Through a combination of actual dangers, manufactured fears, an automotive culture and oil-dependency, and the reduction of freedom’s “ring” to personal comfort and isolation from strangers, the nominally free are begging government to take away even more freedom.

Where is religion in this crisis of freedom? Some leading religious institutions are making hay. The New Puritanism stirs a pot of moralistic fervor that, if allowed to proceed, would scapegoat women and vulnerable minorities, and stifle free-thinking science, diverse ways of living, non-Christians and new ideas. As they apparently see it, a nation built on forward-looking optimism must now sacrifice its freedoms on moral altars erected in the Iron Age. Progressive Christians, to judge by recent national assemblies, seem narrowly focused on tussling over franchise rights and property grabs.

Faith communities need to decide whom they will serve. It is the nature of wealth to serve itself. It is the nature of power to corrupt those who seek and hold it. It is the nature of religious hierarchs to sacrifice people’s yearnings in exchange for access to the king’s ear. It is the nature of freedom-deniers to shout for national honor and patriotic ideals even as they steal other people’s lives and freedoms. It is the nature of rulers to be secretive.

But it is the nature of God to resist such oppressive forces, to shine beacons of freedom, and to insist on human dignity in the face of all who would denigrate. One model is Jesus of Nazareth, who spoke so freely that people shouted him down and lived so freely that people took away his life. Jesus devoted the bulk of his teachings to unmasking power and wealth. Jesus embraced outcasts whom pious religion shunned. Jesus stood up to the religious bullies and cheap moralizers of his day.

This should be faith’s moment. No matter how much freedom the powerful seek to take away, no matter how much freedom the fearful give away, God’s Spirit will stir human hearts to yearn for freedom and to stand against oppression. We have done that before _ the Declaration of Independence was a movement of the human spirit that dragged churches and commerce along with it _ and we can do it again.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

DSB/PH END EHRICH

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